Dream – Night of 2016-08-30

This was a huge dream that I was happy to remember when I woke up:

  • I think it started off in a water park or something, and an entire group of people finds themselves at the end of the ride and at the beginning of a new one called “The Game”
  • The Game is a problem-solving game, and only those who find the solutions advance to the next room.  Advancing to a new room is called “getting older” in the vernacular of The Game.
  • It starts off very easy and everyone makes it to the next room.
  • This next room was a little harder and required you find a lever or something which they saw you find and would usher you through to the next room.
  • It becomes clear at this point that the participants are being observed by the people running The Game.
  • In this next room there are only ten or so people, and there are two glass walls.  One looks out into the “next” room that we are trying to get to, and another looks back into what appears to be the previous room.  In the previous room is a single girl who looks confused and perhaps frightened because she is alone.  She is clearly trying to find her way out.
  • We bang on the glass to try and get her to realize where we are and give her a hint to where she needs to go.
  • We realize we have guns (aren’t dreams great) and start shooting through the glass to make holes in the glass and noise.  The girl in the other room sees/hears these and runs over to start pounding on the glass.
  • Meanwhile, everyone else in our room is trying to get to the other, “next” room.
  • I am eventually able to get the other girl in to this room, and it turns out that’s what you needed to do in order to advance.  The observers are about to send someone else into the room but she speaks up, “No, it should be him that gets older, he brought the other girl here.”
  • I am ushered through a door and into the next room where there are six or seven other people.
  • Everyone is wearing headphones, and I am given a pair.  There is some sort of soft music playing in the headphones.  I realize there is a bar where everyone else is sitting so I go over and sit down too.
  • Sandwiches are placed in front of us and we all realize we’re starving because we’ve been playing this game for a long time now.  The food is devoured.
  • The headphones come alive with a voice telling us to move through a new door that opens in the wall.  We all walk through and find ourselves in what appears to be a standard room of a house with a fireplace at one end, a couch, and some other features.  It’s decorated like an old Victorian house.
  • We are all milling around for a while, unsure what to do.
  • Three of us sit down on the couch, a guy on my left, me, and then a girl on my right.
  • A skeleton, perhaps two and a half feet tall appears on the floor of a side room to our right.  It is writhing around and lit up with some sort of internal glow.  When it finally stops I nudge the girl next to me and say “You should go pick it up.”
  • She does, and as she does it comes back to life and starts writhing around again.
  • She screeches and throws it into the corner of the room where it lands and then stands up.
  • It says something like “congratulations, you may all proceed to the next room.”
  • Everyone leaves except me.  I walk over to inspect the skeleton and see that it’s made of plastic with little lights inside.  I then decide to inspect the fireplace and realize it is also not real.  What appeared from a distance to be ashes inside of it was really thin sheets of tracing paper. There is a hole in one of them and I can see something through it.
  • I tear the paper away and see that under the fireplace is another room with corridors and railway tracks.  I am about to jump down in when a man appears behind me.
  • “Congratulations,” he says as he guides me through a door in the wall that is not the one the others went through.
  • The door closes behind me and I realize the girl who grabbed the skeleton is there, but not anyone else.
  • We are atop a giant concrete platform on the edge of a body of water, and in the distance is the sound of a rumbling diesel motor.
  • I walk over to the edge of the concrete platform and look over the twenty foot drop.  I am trying to see if we are floating or if everything else is.  Before I can find out the girl grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me back.  “You could fall over!” she yells.
  • We are wondering what to do next when three actors come up a gangplank.  At least, we assume they’re actors because we don’t recognize them but they seem to be directing their play towards us.  This goes on for a few minutes and we watch trying to gather clues about this challenge.
  • Suddenly the platform jolts to the left – we are floating apparently because now it is separating from everything else in the room. The girl gives me a look that indicates “if you had been looking over the edge when that happened you’d be at the bottom.”
  • Water from somewhere is rushing around the base of the platform.  Walls come down and doors start to close around this giant room.  The actors are gone and we are left alone in a room that is rapidly becoming a death trap.
  • We begin running for a door at the far end that is closing from the top down.  The girl is in front and it becomes clear that she’s going to make it and I am not.
  • She slips through and lies down on the ground to look back and plead that I crawl through too, but there’s no way, I would be crushed.  She’s crying.  The door closes and I am left alone in the room.
  • I look over off the platform and see some rubber boats floating in the churning water.
  • I run and jump for one and land in the water next to it.
  • I swim to it and easily slide on top of it – I am surprised that I was able to get onto it so quickly.
  • From inside the boat I look around and see that the water in this basin has begun to drain.  There are bubbles everywhere and there is one place where it looks like what could have been a stairwell made out of cage and tube metal, but is now more like a waterfall that descends downward to some unknown
  • Seeing no other option, I decide it’s my only choice and direct my boat towards it.  I crash down through the structure and water, flipping my boat a couple times but managing to right it.
  • After numerous turns the boat is spat out onto a sidewalk where there are cars and people walking around.
  • I look towards the road and see a tractor trailer towing some sort of eqipment made of pipes and pumps and stuff.  I see that it has the same logo as the company running “The Game” so as it passes I run towards it and climb up the back.
  • I find a spot to nestle myself in and find that it’s very comfortable and end up falling asleep.
  • When I wake up were are in a larger city.  At one point a tour bus full of Chinese people drives by and they point out the windows at me laughing, pointing, and taking pictures.
  • I turn away from them and look at where I am laying down.  I am wrapped up in my Top Gun towel and blanket.  “That doesn’t make sense” I think to myself, “Where did i get those?”
  • I look to my right and see we are entering a huge city.  The colors are super-saturated making everything look like one of those crazy HDR pictures.  It’s like everything is made of the color of sunsets.
  • “I wonder what city this is?” I think to myself, “Maybe Gotham?”

At this point in the dream I realize I am dreaming and start to get worried that I’ll wake up.  No, this is too cool, don’t wake up! If I could control it maybe I can make it even better!  Of course, the super-vivid colors of this city start to fade to grayscale and then to black….and I wake up.  I am unhappy that I didn’t get to see what happened.  But magically I am able to fall back asleep, and the dream continues which NEVER happens.  Unfortunately this “part two” of the dream wasn’t as vivid, I was still aware I was dreaming and had trouble controlling it.

  • I am dropped off in front of a hotel and realize I need to go inside if I’m going to find the girl.
  • I search through the hotel lobby to no avail but see an exit towards a mall.
  • The mall is a big courtyard with shops along the edge and people milling around.
  • Suddenly someone shoots at me and I dive out of the way.
  • I see one of the stores is selling antique guns or something, so I make my way over there and steal a couple of them.
  • I return fire to the people shooting at me and I think manage to hit one of them.
  • I run to the other side of the courtyard to escape and continue my search.

I know there was more to that second part but I can’t remember it.  As a note, “The Game” is a similar movie with Michael Douglas so I’d have to change that if this became a story somehow, but the “plot” of this dream is certainly not the same.